8th District

To meet the Department's mission of Creating Opportunities for Safer Communities, the Eighth District created a High Risk Unit. This unit functions as a team and provides field surveillance and other related functions on sex offenders, methamphetamine offenders, and other offenders assessed at a high risk to recidivate.

Officers work throughout the 14-county District, primarily during evening and late-night hours, and provide surveillance, electronic monitoring, drug and alcohol testing, warrant service, and other related tasks on referred offenders.

HRU officers are uniformed, armed, and otherwise equipped as law enforcement officers. In addition, officers are assigned visibly marked and fully equipped law enforcement vehicles. The HRU works closely with all law enforcement agencies.

*Note: A per transaction service fee of 2.5% and $1.50 will be charged by the payment processing company for this service.

The District offers two drug court programs in Ottumwa and Fort Madison, respectively.

Drug Court is a multi-phase intensive treatment program designed to supervise non-violent offenders with substance abuse issues through participation in a comprehensive, judicially monitored program offering drug treatment and rehabilitation services.

The treatment teams include a probation and parole officer, a substance abuse counselor, a prosecuting attorney, a defense attorney, and a presiding judge. Most recently, a federally funded initiative allowed the programs to expand to include mental health services for offenders with a dual diagnoses.

The mission of Drug Court is to enhance public safety through a collaborative effort to more efficiently work with non-violent substance abuse offenders, thereby reducing recidivism and effecting positive long-term change for offenders, their families, and our communities.

The goals include:

• Helping participants remain substance free by providing support, treatment and skills to make positive choices
• Reducing the number of chemically dependent offenders going to prison
• Increasing the effectiveness of substance abuse treatment by providing intensive supportive supervision

The Iowa Domestic Abuse Program promotes accountability while encouraging offenders to stop using the common tactics of power and control against their partners. Those behaviors include intimidation, physical and sexual abuse, verbal and emotional abuse, minimization, denial, blame, collusion, justification, economic abuse, and using the children against their partners.

To achieve this, offenders are taught to use non-violent behaviors that promote respect, responsible parenting, economic partnership, honesty and accountability, trust and support, and negotiation through a 24-week curriculum.

The top priority is to make offenders understand that battering is a choice--- a choice that destroys relationships, families, and even lives. While it would be naïve to suggest that all batterers benefit from the program, we know firsthand that many offenders have been positively impacted by the program.

Much of the success can be directly linked to trained and dedicated facilitators and those offenders who understand the harm they have caused. Although the vast majority of offenders are ordered to the program by the courts, some enroll in the program voluntarily.

If you were sentenced to probation under our Low-Risk Program, you must comply with all court-ordered requirements as outlined in the Judgment Entry within the time frame set by the court. In addition you must pay your supervision fee in full. If you complete all of these requirements before the completion date set by the court, an early discharge request may be submitted to the Court.

YOU REMAIN ON PROBATION UNTIL DISCHARGED BY THE COURT

You are responsible for setting up and completing the conditions ordered by the Court. It is also your responsibility to furnish proof of completion to Probation/Parole Officer Lindsay Epperson. If proof is mailed, send it to the address listed at the bottom of this letter and include your name, county of conviction and cause number on all correspondence.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF THESE REQUIREMENTS ARE NOT MET?

Failure to comply with all requirements may result in revocation of your probation with possible incarceration and/or additional court costs.

OBEY THE LAW

You must obey the law. If arrested, call Lindsay Epperson at (641) 682-3059 ext 257 within 72 hours to report your new charge, when and where it occurred, and the arresting law enforcement agency.

Accessing mental health services in rural Iowa has always presented a challenge due to the lack of available mental health professionals and funding. Once involved with the criminal justice system, mentally ill offenders were too often simply referred to understaffed and overwhelmed local mental health providers, or left to their own devices. Without the ability to first address those mental health needs, offenders were often ill-equipped to adhere to the conditions of supervision and were often revoked from probation and placed in either a residential facility or prison.

In short, there was no comprehensive effort in which community corrections officers and mental health providers work together to create a cohesive action plan to address both the mental health and supervision needs of offenders.

However, with the advent of the District’s Mental Supervision Program in 2011, the needs of mentally ill offenders are being addressed through an 18-24 month diversion program based on the treatment court model. The staff includes a probation and parole officer, a staff psychologist, a defense attorney, a prosecuting attorney, and a presiding judge.

This one-stop approach combines intensive supervision, treatment, and judicial oversight that greatly benefits offenders struggling with mental illness. This program not only addresses the short-term obligations of the criminal justice system, but also focuses on stabilizing and assisting offenders in creating a productive, crime-free future.

Ninety-six percent of Iowa inmates will leave prison. Research indicates that involving offenders in a comprehensive process that addresses substance abuse and mental health needs, education and employment training, other support services and responsive case management, could help break the cycle of criminality and provide the opportunity for offenders to lead productive lives upon their return.

We are all stakeholders in our desire to make our communities safer. By building new collaborations and strengthening existing community partnerships, the Iowa Department of Corrections is working to develop a statewide reentry system to reduce recidivism and the number of those victimized by crime.

Offenders are ordered to the sex offender program if they are currently under supervision for a sexual offense, have a criminal sexual offense history, or are convicted of a nonsexual offense but information about the crime indicates a sexual offense also occurred.

The program is designed to help sex offenders, through therapeutic and educational treatment opportunities, gain control over deviant behavior patterns while being ever vigilant to protect the community by establishing internal and external controls.

Cognitive-behavioral treatment delivered in the group format is universally recognized as the treatment modality of choice for sex offenders. The department uses the group format and a curriculum that includes sections on victim awareness and how sexual assault impacts the lives of survivors, cognitive restructuring, managing deviant sexual arousal, relapse prevention, sexuality, relationship skills, and maintenance. 

Offenders placed in this treatment program are also held to a contract that restricts and monitors their behavior. Supervision can include electronic monitoring as well as software programs that monitor internet access. The use of polygraph testing of sex offenders has emerged in the last several years as one of the best methods to keep the offenders in check so that they don’t revert to old cycles, or patterns.

Even with programs and supervision strategies in place, it is important to underscore that the treatment outcome for sexual offenders is not considered to be a cure of a mental disorder, but rather the development of control of a deviant behavioral pattern.

The District maintains two sex offender treatment programs based in Burlington and Ottumwa that serve 14 counties in southeast Iowa. The programs are supervised by specialized probation and parole officers who are certified through the Iowa Board for the Treatment of Sex Abusers (IBTSA).

The Reasoning Skills Program consists of 12 online lessons. They are designed to help you learn to think more clearly and to show you how to make decisions that get you what you want without creating new problems for yourself or others. There are no costs associated with this program. Please read all the information below before beginning each lesson. First, you will always need notebook paper and a pen or pencil to do these lessons. At the top of each assignment always write the following:

As you work through each lesson you will be asked questions. Write your answers on your piece of notebook paper described above. To gain the most from this program, please take your time and answer all questions thoroughly. When you are done with each lesson, deliver your assignment paper to your probation officer. Your paper will be reviewed and returned to you with comments.

Before you begin each lesson, consider the following:

Contact your probation officer if you have problems with the course, or accessing the files.

Follow the link below to access the lessons. Please complete the lessons in sequence, one per week.